Caralee Johnson Adams has worked as a journalist for nearly 25 years, covering education, health, parenting, and other issues. She received her journalism degree from Iowa State University and her master’s degree in political science from the University of New Orleans.

Data Quality Campaign Reports Progress, But More Work to Do

While every state now has the ability to use data to guide education policy decisions, the reality is many don't still take advantage of it.

The latest snapshot of state-by-state progress on information sharing, Data for Action 2011, was released yesterday by the Data Quality Campaign, a national collaborative based in Washington that encourages the use of data to improve student achievement.

-36 states have established both state education agency and cross-agency data governance entities.
-40 states provide access to student-level longitudinal data to principals and 28 states provide to teachers.
-40 states provide role-based training to educators on state-created longitudinal reports.
-41 states do not link K-12 and workforce data.
-38 states do not link postsecondary and workforce data.
-38 states have not established policies around sharing data across agencies
-36 states have not identified their critical questions to guide cross-agency data efforts.
-42 states do not require data literacy for both program approval and teacher and principal certification.
-46 states do not share teacher performance data with teacher preparation programs.

DQC did hold up some states as examples of doing cutting-edge work, including Arkansas, Maryland, North Carolina and Texas. Last month, we featured Kentucky for its model of data sharing to improve college-going rates and reduce the need for remediation in college.

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